Ruanda's Crisis

By Luan'Sende Lubuele (lubuele@nwu.edu), 30 December 1994

After reading the two posting forwarded by Gratien on Ruanda I got really
worried about the prospect of peace in that country. In the passion of his
analysis the author has characterized most Hutus as extremists who
collectively thought it was only fair for them to massacre Tutsis.
Fortunately all the complaisant and careless claims of these narrow minded
and partisan analysis reassure those of us interested closely to what is
going on in Ruanda that these articles are not necessarely a representation
of the Hutus, they are more of a personal vendetta of the author.
I could not help notice that no where is discussed the issue of who killed
Habyarimana. It cannot be the Tutsi for otherwise this would have been the
headline of the two postings. So as everybody know it must have been the
Hutus (and/or the French?). How come then the author is now accusing the
Tutsi of toppling Habya's government when it is well known it self-destructed
after the assassination of Habya and some of his ministers? I
found it also incredible that western powers (and the French particularly)
are accused of helping the Tutsi! The author goes even as far as to equate
democracy with Hutu's rule! Rwanda has just come out of Hutu regimes in
power since more than two decades but none has been a democratic regime. If
the Hutus were guaranteed to win elections why did not they have free elections?
I feel that the author and many who among the Hutus hold the same kind of
beliefs are just the victims of Habyarimana's propaganda. Habyarimana did
not rule Rwanda with iron in the interest of the Hutu. He did it in his own
interest. And he used the card of racism to 'divide et impere', an old and
proven recipe of authoritarian rule. I was also striken by the stereotypical
characterization of all the Tutsi as almost genetically 'arrogant'! I hope
there will be a day in Africa when people will not allow this kind of
judgement because that is exactly what fuels the ethnic cleansing going on
in the world. I come from an ethnic group in Zaire that our own dictator has
tried to isolate from the rest of the country with the same kind of epithets
and labelling. Although he has been succesful in some parts of Zaire, he is
still in shock that more and more zairian are not buying it anymore. That's
what is making me hopeful about Zaire. And worried about Rwanda since i have
not seen yet many concilliatory and impartial comments and analysis of the
the Hutu-Tutsi relations.